The Sign of the Babe reveals Four Things.
I. That our Saviour was a real man. "Ye shall find the Babe." In the flesh our flesh Christ came; as truly man as He was truly God; and infinite though the mystery may be, that is the truth gathering about the Babe wrapt in swaddling clothes and lying in the manger.
II. That our Saviour was simplya man. "Ye shall find the Babe "just a babe no more. He was almost an outcast babe no interest evidently gathered about Him when He came. We can say very little more about Him than this: He was a babe. We cannot put any of the ordinary adjectives and say He was a royal babe, or a wealthy babe, or a promising babe, or a learned man's babe: He was just a babe.
III. The sign shows us our Saviour as a loving man. Christ came to begin the reign of love; to make love for ever the one force that should rule man's spirit, man's intercourse, man's relationship. Therefore, He came as a babe to win first a mother's heart, and through that mother's heart to win his way into the very heart of mankind.
IV. The sign shows us our Saviour, for the most part, a rejected man "wrapt in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger." It was the custom in the East to dress very young children merely in folds of linen and woollen. But the giving of this description by the angel, "swaddling clothes," seems to intimate some peculiar unreadiness for Christ. He came unexpectedly, and the best that could be done had to be arranged for Him in the circumstances. The world was not even ready for Him as a babe.
R. TUCK, Christian World Pulpit,vol. x., p. 404.
I. The text teaches us how everywhere and in all things the Divine veils and even hides Itself in the outward. This shall be your sign not the march of a conqueror, not the splendour of a king, but the babe wrapt in its swaddling bands; and the babe lying in a manger. Wherever God is the presence is secret. What, for example, is the Book of God the Bible but an example of this sanctity in commonness; a heap of leaves, marked with ink and hand, stamped with signs for sounds, multiplied by printing-press and steam engine, conveyed hither and thither by railways, bought and sold in shops; tossed from hand to hand in schools and homes, lost and dissipated by vulgar wear and tear. Yet in this Book of books thus material, thus earthly, thus human in its circumstances there lie concealed the very breath and spirit of God Himself mighty to stir hearts, and mighty to regenerate souls. The swathing bands of sense and time enclose the living and moving power which is of eternity, which is Divine nay, the sign of the true Deity is the fact that the form is human.
II. The same thing which is true of the Bible is true also of the Church and of the Christian. Where is it, we ask, that God in Christ dwells most certainly, most personally, on this earth? It is no word of man's invention which answers to the Church: "Ye collectively are the temple of God;" and to the Christian: "Your body is the shrine of the Holy Ghost which is in you." The treasure of Divine light is always held in earthen vessels: not until the pitcher is broken at the fountain shall the full radiance shine out so as to be read of all men. Meanwhile, the sign of God is the commonness. Christ came not to take men out of the world, but to consecrate and keep them in it.
III. And was it not exactly thus with our Lord Jesus Christ Himself not only in the circumstances of His birth, but throughout His human life and His earthly ministry? Even when the preparation was ended, and the life beyond all other lives was begun, still was it not true that the Godhead veiled itself in the humanity? The sign of the birth was the sign also of the life. Christ the Lord is here, and therefore the human the very human is the token.
C.J. Vaughan, Penny Pulpit,new series, No. 999.
This verse presents to us, in the most striking manner, that our Lord, however mysteriously His human nature was pervaded and exalted by a Divine nature, was, notwithstanding such ineffable and inexplicable complication, one of ourselves: that He passed through the ordinary gradations of humanity, increasing in wisdom, increasing in stature, keeping pace with both these developments by a corresponding progress in the love and admiration of those about Him, and in the favour and approval of His Heavenly Father.
I. In the grief of Mary for the temporary loss of her Child we may trace a suggestion for those who find themselves to be undergoing in their own inward experience a similar separation. Would it not be well that those who experience this loss this privation of the Divine Comforter should go straight back, like Mary, from the point at which they are to the point where they last enjoyed it, and retrace the steps that led them away from it, and return to the house of God, the presence of God, the ordinances of God, if haply they may recover what they have lost? And let them be encouraged to do this by the fact that the parents not only sought but found Christ at Jerusalem.
II. There were, in connection with the Temple, apartments where the Jewish rabbis were accustomed to give lectures on the Mosaic law, to which the Jewish youths who contemplated devoting themselves to the office of teacher were permitted to resort, and to elicit the information they required by putting questions, which were answered by the rabbis. In one of these halls or porches dedicated to religious learning He was discovered by His parents. He was engaged in asking questions, and in listening to the answers. If there should seem to be something almost like peremptoriness, abruptness, independence, in the Divine Child's reply to His mother, that incongruous and jarring sort of feeling will be dissipated by adverting to the perfectly filial submission to parental authority recorded in Luke 2:51 : "And He went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them." Christ came to brighten the homes of poverty, and to make nobility consist in something else than birth to set up a new patent of nobility. Let the humble craftsman look at Him as a holy Brother.
W. H. Brookfield, Sermons,p. 227.